cicada

4:22 AM

@MilkyWay90 how did you know what the rickroll's plaintext should be? :)

@ngn I looked at the description

and "octal-ed" it

It was encoded in octal

so a print("".join(chr(int(i,8))for i in input().split())) did it

I put the description as input to that

but that gives the ciphertext, doesn't it?

@ngn Yeah

That's what I was working on

little did I know that atbash decoding would have solved it :(

and little did I know what atbash was

so you just guessed that that is a cipher for shelley's other poem :)

Yeah, it really looked like it

same length, and the other poem was already there

4:27 AM

makes sense, given the spaces and punctuation are at the right places

yeah

0:17 - 3^7
0:29 - 2^5
0:45 - 9^4
0:06 - 3^4
0:35 - 5^4
0:18 - 4^9
0:58 - 3^7

For that, maybe try bitwise xoring the numbers

like 3 and 7, 2 and 5, etcetera

Theres also a new clue

Try atbash decoding it

Argh firbase isnt working

@MilkyWay90 where did you get a clue from?

@ngn www.randomstuffonline.com/chat.html

Where the clues started manifestign

*manifesting

Okay logged in here

I was user10909325, since I forgot to login

Name: zouivwl

Contents: Lmv urmzo xliivxgrlm, rm gsv Xzvhzi, xszizxgvi 14, 18, 19, zmw 21 ziv xzkrgzoravw.

@ngn see above

^^

@MilkyWay90 "One final correction, in the Caesar, character 14, 18, 19, and 21 are capitalized."

@ngn Oh, I just copypasted

@ngn Wait nevermind, I didn't see you had the quotes there

I thought you were talking to me for a sec

4:38 AM

i decoded with atbash

Seems like it was encoded with atbash, yeah

atbatsh3.png

Oof

Never saw it was named that

01/12/2019 17:20 141 151 146 162 145 144 157: 561 1105 1729 2465

so they keep giving you clues on your website? they must be watching us :)

probs

Actually probably not

What does the contents say for the message I just sent

1 min ago, by MilkyWay90

01/12/2019 17:20 141 151 146 162 145 144 157: 561 1105 1729 2465

I decoded the name as 'aifredo', but not the contents

B♭ A# A A G D♭ B♭ B♭ D D D

for this, we should maybe put it in an mp3 or midi file

@ngn That's what I got

i'm stupid. ofc it's not octal

or something similar

4:45 AM

there's a 9 there

and I tried all bases

all the way from base 10 to base 36

0:17 - 3^7 - person twirling

0:29 - 2^5 - person nodding head

I have a feeling there are very faint lyrics

Restricted Mode has hidden discussions for this channel.

aw man

are there any discussions for it, tho

@ngn are there any discussions for the youtube channel?

Like the one that made the rickroll video

i don't understand. what discussions?

youtube.com/channel/UCf1Log20FWEkMqB6GTdWdVg/discussion

@MilkyWay90 i don't see any comments there

Okay

What do you think 0:17 - 3^7
0:29 - 2^5
0:45 - 9^4
0:06 - 3^4
0:35 - 5^4
0:18 - 4^9
0:58 - 3^7
is?

4:53 AM

no idea...

Maybe we use a youtube to mp4 and splice the video?

the audio is rather noisy. there might be something in that noise

yeah

Thats sort of what I was saying before I have a feeling there are very faint lyrics

Or do you mean something hidden in the mp4 file?

But I'm not sure whether downloading videos from Youtube is legal or not

@MilkyWay90 how can you watch/listen to a video if your computer doesn't download it... :)

@ngn True

But I meant we probably need the video file itself and open it in a text editor

5:00 AM

ok, i got the bytes for the audio

Nicr

*Nice

but i've no clue what to do with them

How?

Can you send them to me?

i used youtube-dl

via github?

5:02 AM

no, it was available in debian repos, but that version didn't work, so i just downloaded directly the newest version

I meant could you send me the mp3 file via github

ah

Also, does youtube-dl compress the video

If so, then we won't be able to find anything if something is there

@MilkyWay90 it's an .m4a, not .mp3

Oh, probably stil wil work

5:04 AM

these are the available formats:

$ youtube-dl -F youtube.com/watch?v=MtO589eu-Rc
[youtube] MtO589eu-Rc: Downloading webpage
[youtube] MtO589eu-Rc: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] MtO589eu-Rc: Downloading MPD manifest
[info] Available formats for MtO589eu-Rc:
format code  extension  resolution note
139          m4a        audio only DASH audio   49k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.5@ 48k (22050Hz), 564.06KiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  130k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k (44100Hz), 1.46MiB

Get the 44100 Hz

i'm not into audio processing, so i don't know how to extract the raw data from there

this is likely compressed

aw man

Well, let's try it anyways

So how do you get the resulting mp4 file?

there's no mp4

just m4a

Sorry, m4a

5:11 AM

@MilkyWay90 i put them in gitlab.com/n9n/cicada

@ngn Okay, i'll take a look at it

@ngn Okay have to go sleep will take a look tomorrow

@MilkyWay90 ok. good night

6:35 AM

@MilkyWay90 i converted the .m4a to .au (with ffmpeg) and uploaded it. it turns out the .au format is really simple

3:01 PM

what we know so far

3:24 PM

Okay

@ngn I'm going to splice the m4a files in python according to the times in the video description.

@MilkyWay90 ok. you have to discard the first 32 bytes. the rest is 16-bit samples in 2 interleaved channels

ok

@MilkyWay90 regarding your idea for playing the notes - we don't know which octaves they belong to either. this could be a high B♭ or a low B♭

right

@MilkyWay90 i hope you don't mind i put a transcript of your website's chat in the notes? i can revert if you feel uncomfortable with this

3:41 PM

@ngn That's all right

It's the public chat, so it's already public

`pastebin.com/7mGG7Lff

Oof

Pydub is erroring for no reason

Do you know any solution?

@MilkyWay90 well, it says you don't have ffmpeg installed

oh

I did pip install ffmpeg and it is still not working

shrug i haven't used windows for the past 10 years and i have no experience with audio processing with python (or anything else)

@MilkyWay90 why not read the file directly? the format is pretty simple

okay

i have absolutely no idea how to analyse the data, but i like to have the data :)

3:55 PM

ok

so, lemme think. the rate is 44.1kHz, there are 2 channels, i want to see what's at 0:17. how many samples do i have to skip... ?

@ngn Yeah I've heard of cicada in the past

@ngn I dunno what channels are

@Quintec Yeah, they're pretty mysterious

If this is Cicada, we may use OutGuess for some of the other image files

to get more clues

@MilkyWay90 stereo, presumably - left and right

the samples should alternate between the 2 channels

ok

How many samples per seconds?

4:00 PM

@MilkyWay90 44100

yeah, obviously i have to skip 2*44100*17 samples :)

88200 * 17

1499400 samples

OOF

and what do i see - a bunch of numbers...

I think it would be best to use a software for this

Oh, you already skipped 1499400 samples?

@MilkyWay90 yeah, that's not very hard

oh

Did you use something like "goto line 1499399" or something like that?

4:05 PM

i guess some kind of spectral analysis / fourier transforms would be necessary... and i feel so dumb

same

@MilkyWay90 i use the vector programming language that i've been working on lately. there it's just 1499399_x

Oh

x_y means "drop the first x from y"

I have an idea

I'm going to ask on warzone.com/Forum/f8-topic

4:08 PM

@MilkyWay90 i don't know what that is, but go ahead

Yeah, some people there are smarter than they seem to be

we should also think about where the poem and the zebra may come into play

right

ha!! i discovered something :)

what?

4:23 PM

i searched for "whzalipu jvt" the string from the image with the flowers

yeah?

On the internet? or where?

and found some bizarre images at imgur

for example this

the comment below is in caesar7

Oh!

it's a link to pastebin.com/xdzuusn6

hehe, this is a wormhole for skipping levels :)

Ohh yeah I remember seeing that imgur post but dismissed it as the same link to the pastebin with the poem

I dunno, I think that we need thhe previous levels

4:27 PM

this is different...

Atbash decode?

I’m debating whether to work on essays or this

decoding with caesar7 again: "Hello, this is neb again. This time, I made this a Vigenere Cipher. To find the key, go to this video: youtube.com/watch?v=gfCbOEipZus&t and learn who tried to snap this stupid meme out of existence. By the way, the Vigenere Cipher is here: Iop, non ialiew kong tbye tvabz. turn on case sensitivity"

So the key is or isn’t thanos

Oh god

I am laughing so hard I can barely breathe

Grandayy made the meme

4:32 PM

what did i just watch...

is thanos the purple one with the scar-tissue beard?

i dont know

apparently yes - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanos

I'm trying to snap it out of existence but it won't go

cryptii.com/pipes/vigenere-cipher

@ngn ^

I decoded it

It says "wow, you wasted your time again"

@ngn @Quintec see above. We were fooled

nice :D

so it was a red herring

So it’s telling us to go spend time in the 19th byte :

4:41 PM

imgur.com/a/Ooga8yj

what is MatPat?

MatPat is a YT

youtuber

The person who said I'm trying to snap this out of existence

And the pastebin said "The key is the person who tried to snap this meme out of existence"

He’s also Game theory

i see

4:44 PM

I can help decipher memes if I can’t help in any other way :P

@Quintec Yay

I'm gonna go to Warlight and see if I got any help yet

brb

I’m also on my phone... I’ll look into more detail once I get on computer

warzone.com/Forum/330307-help-cicada-3301-puzzle

Okay back

People are just challenging whether it is Cicada or not

I would say be cations about sharing too much... maybe keep it here.... cicada got annoyed about widespread collaboration last time if it really is them

Pretty sure PPCGers contain the smartest people anyway xd

@Quintec Right, but it may not be Cicada

not until we find something that had to be made by Cicada

But yeah, PPCG does contain a lot of intellectually enhanced users

4:49 PM

@Quintec well, that's certainly helpful. i can write code to analyze large volumes of data fast, but hollywood and popular culture are foreign to me

coursehero.com/file/8027418/Latin-2-Yr-translations

!!!!!

@Quintec Latin may be helpful, yes

@ngn Can you update the What We Know page on GitLab with this horrendous Youtube video?

So, any ideas?

@MilkyWay90 maybe in a separate wiki page?

it wasn't meant to be part of the main challenge

@ngn Right

Anyways, let's search up more clues on imgur

That’s the innkeeper textt

4:58 PM

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

I’m saying book cipher

Let me see if there are any books with the same name

google.com/…

Ughhhh

nothing works

@NGN @Quintec Any ideas?

Maybe we have to look at past clues?

@ngn 2 37 13 11 7 47 means "alfredo", we just don't know why

@MilkyWay90 gitlab.com/n9n/cicada/wikis/red-herrings

@MilkyWay90 how do you know it means "alfredo"?

@ngn Because all the other message names have been "alfredo"

the length doesn't match

5:12 PM

oh

and the fact it's all primes might have some significance

Well that's something we need to decode

ooh primes

2 is the first prime ("a")

37 is the 9th prime ("i")

13 is the 6th prime ("f")

alfedo

*aifedo

Right?

or did i count wrong

tio

5:18 PM

let's go see if this has any other use for other clues

Maybe see all the primes in the pastebin?

@ngn nevermin

@ngn My suggestion is just to randomly try new encryptions

Got tog o make breakfast bye

@MilkyWay90 the text I linked should be from a book

Doesn’t it say which one

@Quintec annoyed? how did they show that?

@ngn messages to the participants in the global coordinate hunt

Ive followed cicada for a while xd

5:35 PM

it's not entirely unpredictable that public collaboration will happen...

@ngn Maybe

Okay, I think we are stuck

We are probably looking for a link

Can i get a list of all leads that we don't know the meaning of

Or maybe put that at the top/bottom of the gitlab

@Quintec just search for "unknown" in the wiki's home page

ok

i need to update it with the discovery about primes

5:51 PM

Does anybody know a regular expression to detect links?

This is what I have so far: [a-z][0-5]\.[a-z][a-z][a-z]

the link i previously posted, [coursehero.com/file/8027418/Latin-2-Yr-translations/](this) is definitely from a book, it's used for latin translations everywhere,found it 10 times on quizlet

but i can't find the source

oh

gtg, see you later

k bye

6:13 PM

(Link broke, it's coursehero.com/file/8027418/Latin-2-Yr-translations

All i can find is lschs.org/uploaded/faculty/geiger/Capitulum_XIX.doc